With Om Ali’s Honeycomb, Jasmina Husic brings a sweet taste of Yemen to Atlanta

In 2022, Jasmina Husic found herself in a kitchen in Ibb, a city in the northern part of Yemen. The Woodstock resident was there during Ramadan to spend time with her husband’s mother and extended family—her first time meeting them since her marriage. By the time she got home to Georgia, though, Jasmina didn’t just have a new family—she also had a treasured new bread recipe.

When she was overseas, Jasmina’s mother-in-law taught her how to make khaliat nahal, a fluffy Yemeni bread consisting of small, round pieces of dough that are filled with cream cheese and baked close together in a pan. When it comes out of the oven, the bread is brushed with honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds, and resembles the inside of a beehive—hence its English name, honeycomb bread. In Yemen, honeycomb bread is a staple of weddings and religious celebrations, but it’s also enjoyed as an everyday snack, usually with coffee or tea. While she was visiting the country, Jasmina would gather every day with her mother-in-law, six sisters-in-law, and aunts and cousins of her husband to bake the bread—outdoors, in a wood or charcoal oven—to eat after they broke the Ramadan fast at sunset.

Though it was her first time in Yemen, parts of the trip felt familiar to Jasmina. Her parents are originally from Bosnia, which they fled during the conflict in the 1990s; Jasmina was born in a German refugee camp, though she’s been able to return to Bosnia since. In Yemen, Jasmina said, “I felt like I was in Bosnia all over again. With the scenery of the mountains, because Bosnia is really mountainous and green. It’s the same in the north of Yemen.” The culture around baking bread felt familiar too; she remembers helping her mother in the kitchen as a child. Coming to the U.S. at six years old with her parents, Jasmina grew up in Gwinnett County and stayed in the area, eventually obtaining a paralegal degree and getting married. 

When Jasmina got back from her trip to Yemen, she started making honeycomb bread as a snack for her husband and their five children. She even  brought the treat to a parent-teacher meeting at her child’s school. “Everybody fell in love with it,” she said.  “So I was like: Okay, how can I utilize this?” She started making a weekly delivery to Roswell’s Mid East Halal Market, where people began buying the bread to eat as a snack after Friday prayers. “We would sell out every single Friday,” Jasmina said. Things snowballed, and pretty soon she decided to open a cottage bakery: Om Ali’s Honeycomb, now a bustling business described on its Instagram page as “Bosnian roots meet Yemeni tradition.”

Om Ali’s success has dovetailed with the growth of Yemeni-style cafes and other coffeehouses that cater to a largely Arab and Muslim clientele—offering late-night hours, alcohol-free social spaces, and specialty drinks and pastries. Now, every week, Jasmina bakes between 300 and 350 large round pans of honeycomb bread to deliver to two popular metro cafes: Alpharetta’s MOTW Coffee and Roswell’s 967 Coffee Co. (She’s planning on selling it, too, at another coffee shop opening soon in Midtown.) Jasmina takes individual orders through her Instagram account, does catering, and pops up at events like last month’s Atlanta Summer Halal Food Festival.

Part of Jasmina’s process for making the bread is familiar: She starts by mixing a big batch of dough before dividing it into smaller balls and placing them in the pan. “The kneading is the hardest part,” she said, “because you have to make sure it’s soft enough and it’s not too clumpy.” Although she initially did the kneading by hand, she eventually was able to buy an industrial mixer and learned how to achieve the same consistency with the machine. She uses her mother-in-law’s traditional recipe, though Jasmina has also developed fillings and toppings of her own—her honeycomb breads can incorporate Biscoff cookies, cinnamon sugar and coconut flakes, chocolate and hazelnut, pistachio cream, and sweetened condensed milk and rose petals. 

It’s still a family affair, with everything prepared in her kitchen at home. Jasmina’s children help her with rolling the buns and stuffing them with cream cheese. “I feel it’s so important to teach them the value of working,” she said. “It’s important to teach them responsibility, and preserving [our culture].” The business’s name is also inspired by family: Jasmina’s eldest son is named Ali, and Om means “mother of.” 

Jasmina’s own family was displaced by war – and that’s in part what inspires her to support others: “You never lose by giving,” she said. She donated 20 percent of her proceeds from the halal food fest to people in Gaza, and organized a raffle that collected $750 to support a mother in the besieged Palestinian territory. 

Jasmina’s long-term goal is to open her own brick-and-mortar bakery, and continue to educate people about Yemeni cuisine and traditions. “Knowing that I’m able to preserve something so special for my mother-in-law, and to spread it here, it brings me so much happiness,” she said. “She gets so happy that she’s able to share something so beautiful and special with the rest of the world.”